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The Cube of Life | Space Writing

The Cube of Life


By Ziad Aazam / Friday, 14th December 2012 / 3D Continuum, Concept Formation, Critical Thinking, Integral Thinking, Philosophy, Society, Space Writing / Leave a comment /

(http://spacewriting.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/metal-cube_0011.jpg) The Cube of Life This morning I was typing my thoughts to myself on Facebook, without any expectations from a friend or foe to comment on what I write, when suddenly an idea of a cube representing reality and dream became available to my mind. It is basically a model of reality and dream envisioned spatially as a nine-square grid house in plan, horizontally, and in section, vertically. Everyone speaks of left wing, right wing and middle or center when positioning people political views along the continuum of extreme liberalism and conservatism, while addressing issues that relate to parties political orientation, intellectual, cultural and social worldviews. Well, to me this is not enough to model reality, because it is a one-dimensional representation of reality. One is either to the right or left or in between with some degree of variations. So I am proposing to use a three-dimensional cube with multiple left to right and middle relationships horizontally, vertically and diagonally, covering the traditional onedimensional continuum, while adding two other sets of two-dimensional and threedimensional relationship types.
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The Cube of Life | Space Writing

The House I am calling this nine-square grid cube a House, because it houses the range of our human extreme realities and values. And because I am an architect and I know there are nine-square grid houses in architecture. Just like a building has closed and open rooms, so is our cube house. So, liberalism and conservatism are accommodated in these rooms with or without partitioning walls depending on the design of the house. However, how can we understand the variable design of our own house without understanding the house design in its ideal type? Who are occupying the rooms of our current house and who should be occupying these rooms in the ideal type house? To make it easier to comprehend, I call them Reality House and Dream House, the former is the current messy house, and the latter is the ideal type house. Dream House As an architect when designing a house, I start with sketching my spatial and formal interpretation of the requirements. This is just a sketch of the Dream House. In plan, or horizontal plane, the house is divided into front, middle and back sections. It is also divided into right, middle and left. In our nine-square grid, there is one room, or let us call it space, remains at the center of the house, located between front and back and right and left. That is where most people meet, right at the center of the house, as we conceive it in plan. Now, let us conceive it in section, which is a vertical plane. The house has bottom, middle (again) and top, in addition to right-middle-left typical divisions we have horizontally. The plans, or the floors, are repeated with the same arrangement I described above, front-middle-back. Each horizontal plane has nine-square grid. This leaves us with a central space cutting across bottom-middletop grid spaces. This is where most peoples movement and occupation take place in the house. Now, what kinds of people live in the Dream House? At the bottom level, we find the workers, the grass roots, the masses and the followers; at the middle, we find the educated, the middle-class, the ones who provide links between the bottom and the top; and at the top, we find the elites, the leaders, the powerful, and the controllers. At each level, these types of people live in the right, middle or left wings. Those on the outer spaces live on the edge of the house, have views to the outside, enjoy wider perceptional horizon, possess extreme attachment to reality outside the house, thriving at the frontier, or submitting to life at the back, holding on their traditions on the right, or exploring liberty at the left. Those at the inner spaces live at the center in a comfort zone, mostly pushed and pulled, squeezed and stretched by everyone else left and right, front and back, top and bottom; they are moderate in views, not at the frontier nor backwardly placed. While the nine-square grid cube has views to the outside at four sides and one top, the lower level allows for an underground level with eternalized views since external views are not possible. This level of the house, which is unaccounted for, provides an opportunity for a foundational structural depth or a threat to the stability of the house because of the lack of structural depth or forces to transform its foundation. Reality House Now, in this quick sketch to model reality on a three-dimensional continuum, horizontally, vertically and diagonally, all I ask you to do is try to imagine our/your reality house using the description of the Dream House above. Remember that the Dream House is just an effort
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The Cube of Life | Space Writing

to categorize an ideal type house, its spaces, levels and people moving or occupying these spaces and levels. Using this model, reflect on your Reality House and imagine what you like your Dream House to be. Tags: Continuum (http://spacewriting.wordpress.com/tag/continuum/), Cube of Life (http://spacewriting.wordpress.com/tag/cube-of-life/), Left and Right (http://spacewriting.wordpress.com/tag/left-and-right/), Politics (http://spacewriting.wordpress.com/tag/politics/), Worldview (http://spacewriting.wordpress.com/tag/worldview/) Blog at WordPress.com. | The Imbalance 2 Theme.

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